Many drugs and medications currently prescribed by physicians require periodic administration at specified times. If the patient errs and repeats the dosage too frequently, an overdose may result. Similarly, if the patient should fail to administer the medication at the proper time intervals, the concentration of medicine in the patient's body may become to low.
Therefore, certain time keeping responsibilities are clearly imposed when taking a medication. This time keeping responsibility falls of necessity upon either the patient or those who care for him. With regard to the latter, the problems are aggravated if more than one person cares for the patient, such as in a family or institutional setting. The multiple attendants must accurately communicate with one another or confusion may result as to when medication should again be administered. This situation may lead to under or over dosage of the medication.
Perhaps most commonly, the patient will note the current time on a watch or other standard time keeping device. On the basis of a physician's instructions regarding the minimum and maximum safe intervals between doses of medication, and on the basis of the total amount of medication to be administered over a possibly extended period of time, the patient then calculates the time when the next medication should be taken and commits the calculated time to memory. When the later time arrives, the patient readministers the medication and repeats the process.
A number of disadvantages become apparent in this prior art method. For instance, the patient or caretaker may not correctly remember the appropriate time, of the individual may be otherwise distracted at the predetermined time and fail to administer the medication. These problems become particularly acute with patients whose mental or physical condition makes them less capable of reliably discharging such actions, or, as mentioned above, where a number of persons are responsible for the patient.
Other suggested solutions to this problem are found in the prior art. A number of devices are designed to either minimize the mental calculation involved and/or to operate as reminder devices. Such a device may coprise a small pill case having a timer and alarm built into it such that when the alarm sounds, the patient will be alerted and hopefully act in accordance with the instructions provided by the physician's prescription.
Often, however, the patient should not use such a reuseable integral pill container, timer and alarm. For instance, it may be impossible (as with liquids), inconvenient or improper to transfer medicine from the primary container to such an integral pill box. More importantly, some medications are not suitable for use with reusable pill containers due to accumulated toxicity problems.
Perhaps more fundamental, these devices act only as simple alarm clocks that include the sometimes convenient feature of positioning the medication proximal to the clock. Other than sounding an alarm, however, no provisions are made to ensure or urge compliance with the medication schedule. The user can simply shut off the alarm and never take any further steps towards administering the medication, either through intentional or unintentional neglect, thereby risking an overdose condition. Further, if the user does take the medication on schedule, he may still neglect to restart the timing function, and thereby risk either an overdose condition or an underdose condition.
In an earlier filed U.S. patent application Ser. No. 949,800), I disclose a timer and alarm apparatus useful for the periodic dispensation of medication. This device included a pressure sensitive switch that could be operably connected to a medication container. Upon squeezing the pressure sensitive switch when opening the container, the switch would signal the alarm mechanism to terminate sounding the alarm. In other words, an act that would normally indicate compliance with the medication schedule also caused the alarm to cease.
Though the alarm termination feature of the above invention urges compliance with the prescription schedule, it did not include an integral pill container. And, just as there are times when an integral pill container may be inappropriate for use by the patient, there may also be times when an integral pill container provides necessary convenience and flexibility. In addition, the pressure sensitive switch I disclosed therein poses certain difficulties in that it may be difficult to repeatedly assure proper operation when used with a great variety of containers.
In view of the above, the prior art lacks a medical timer device suitable for use in the regular dispensation of medications that may be used either with an integral pill container or a non-integral pill container and that further includes an alarm termination and/or time measurement restart switch that responds to some parameter indicative of compliance, thereby urging compliance. In order to encourage economic efficiency, this switch should be inexpensive, and should be usable and reliable with both integral and non-integral containers.